Dubai: Today’s universities must not only embrace technology but also understand changing student mindsets, in order to be “future-ready”, the CEO of Manipal Academy of Higher Education Dubai (MAHE Dubai), said.
In an interview, Ravi Panchanadan, who is also managing director and CEO of Manipal Global Education Services, said today’s students are more assertive, self-assured, tech-savvy and expect a global outlook and education no matter where they study.
“If you don’t listen to your students and this generation, I think universities will become irrelevant one day. You have to listen to them carefully and at the same time, guide them and give them leadership qualities,” Panchanadan said.
Self-assured students
“The future-ready student is very different. Whatever you used to think of students 10 years ago, those are not the students in your class today. Today’s students are more relevant, tech-savvy and much more surer about themselves, very self-assured. But they also have a very short attention span. You can’t put them in a classroom for one or two hours: after 15 minutes, they are going to tune off. So how do you give them, what I call ‘bit-sized’ learning?”
Panchanadan pointed to brief instructional clips on YouTube, a medium popular with students, as one example of bit-sized learning. Digital platforms, which they can access anywhere — in the classroom, university canteen, or home — are the best means of instruction, he said.
Future-ready
Another “pillar” of being future-ready, he added, is anticipating what the upcoming job market will demand and offering relevant university programmes.
“We’ve started a programme called Data Sciences. We do understand that the Middle East market is still warming up to the idea of Analytics and Data Sciences. But we’ve already got a course at the undergraduate level, as well as a Post Graduate Diploma in Data Sciences, a two-year programme. This is the kind of the market, if you ask me, in two-years’ time. But we’ve already launched that course.”
Panchanadan added that the UAE also lends itself to being future-ready, because of the various futuristic initiatives being launched. “The UAE is probably the only country that has a Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence [for example]. They have that vision,” he said.
Global relevance
Lastly, Panchanadan said it was essential that students today are “globally relevant”. “It’s not adequate for a student to be just studying or learning about the UAE or India or wherever. [It’s about] how you create opportunities for the student to interact with the global system, whether it’s through student exchange programmes, bringing in faculty from outside, encouraging them to go for competitions abroad, all of that put together is how you make them globally relevant.
“It’s also about how we improve the faculty composition, from a predominantly subcontinental faculty base to a more heterogeneous, global faculty base.”
Top ranking
MAHE Dubai, established in 2000, is a branch campus of MAHE in India. MAHE Dubai offers over 40 programmes and enrols more than 2,000 students, according to its website www.manipaldubai.com
Previously known as Manipal University, MAHE has once again been ranked the number one private university in India, in the latest annual QS World University Rankings.
At MAHE, the “ever-continued focus on research”, a low faculty-student ratio (1:12 in some schools of study), and “making our students more globally relevant than others” were among the key reasons for the top ranking, the CEO said.
Name change
On the name change (from Manipal University to Manipal Academy of Higher Education), Panchanadan said that ‘deemed to be university’ establishments in India “get university status subject to certain things happening; it’s just a technicality”.
He pointed out that MAHE received the top QS ranking (as well as the No. 2 ranking in the Indian government’s National Institutional Ranking Framework) after the name change. “We are the same. All these [top rankings] happened after the name change. I firmly believe that form is temporary — what is permanent is class. The name change doesn’t make a difference. When you walk into Manipal, you will see quality.”
